THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK, N.D. (AP) — After the last hints of sunset dip behind the hills, the North Dakota horizon comes alive with flickering orange flames of a different kind — natural gas flares.

These tiny tongues of fire burn bright against the dark prairie just beyond the boundaries of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands, where the man who later became the nation's 26th president sought solace after his wife and mother both died unexpectedly on the same day in 1884 in his native New York.

Today, the resurgent American oil industry is tapping into this rugged landscape, so the vistas that soothed Roosevelt's grief and helped instill his zeal for conservation now include oil rigs and flares used to burn off natural gas that comes to the surface.

Oil development is strictly forbidden within the park itself, but park officials worry that the flares, lights and noise from drilling just beyond the protected area are sullying the natural spaces cherished by Roosevelt as a bespectacled young man in his mid-20s.

Visitors know "that the park experience is much more than waking up inside the borders and looking around," said Nick Lund, landscape conservation program manager at the Washington-based National Parks Conservation Association. "Things that happen outside the park really affect the experience of visiting, both from a visitor standpoint and from an environmental standpoint."

The park of more than 70,000 acres sits atop the Bakken shale, an oil-rich rock formation that for decades frustrated drillers who could not coax anything profitable from the ground. But advances in hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling have unlocked huge amounts of petroleum here. North Dakota is now the second-biggest oil producer in the U.S. after Texas.

The park's landscape is a showcase for the state's varied terrain. It has steep-sided barren buttes dropping into grassy valleys, as well as tall sandstone formations and rock layers that reveal tens of millions of years of natural history. The wildlife includes bison and horses, yipping prairie-dog colonies and elusive mountain lions.

In this "desolate, grim beauty," Roosevelt found solitude and built a cattle ranch. Later in life, he said he would not have become president without the healing time spent in the Badlands.

Society's footprint has drawn ever closer to the wilderness as trailer parks are established to house oil workers and tanker trucks carrying drilling chemicals and water crowd once lonely roads.

During the day, it can be difficult to spot oil development in the distance. But at night, the flares and oil field lights brighten the horizon. At times, park Superintendent Valerie Naylor says, it's possible to see 26 natural gas flares from the park.

The gas is a byproduct of oil production and a valuable resource on its own. But with no systems in place to capture it, store it or transport it, some oil producers simply burn it off.

In March, North Dakota burned off 33 percent of its natural gas. Nationwide, around 1 percent of natural gas is flared, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Park officials said flaring has caused significant light pollution that can spoil the state's dark night skies.

"Luckily, that is a resource that can be recovered. If you turn off the lights, you get the night sky back," said Eileen Andes, the park's chief of interpretation.

Some visitors have reported hearing the sounds of the oil industry deep inside the park. The Little Missouri River and the park's canyons can amplify noise from miles away, making the development seem even closer.

The park, which is just a small slice of the Badlands, is surrounded by the Little Missouri National Grasslands, which is managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Unlike national parks, Forest Service lands can be used for oil and gas extraction. Nearly all of the area is currently leased for oil and gas development and more than 600 wells have been drilled, according to Babete Anderson, a spokeswoman for the grasslands area.

Expanding oil activity in the years ahead will probably alter the character of the grasslands.

"If you put 29 well bores on every 2 square miles, it's industrial. It's not the Badlands anymore," said Jan Swenson, executive director of the Badlands Conservation Alliance.

Park officials do meet with oil companies to talk about mitigating the effects of drilling on the park. They also consult with the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which approves oil developments.

Park managers have successfully convinced some companies to either relocate or abandon projects that might have been detrimental to the park, Naylor said.

"We do want to make it clear that we are not anti-oil development," Andes said. "But we think it can be done in a way that doesn't affect park resources in a negative way."

North Dakota currently has more than 10,000 wells producing oil, with many more coming. For those fighting to conserve natural places sitting on top of oil reservoirs, the scope of development presents an uphill battle.

"I don't have optimism," Swenson said, "I have hope and persistence."

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By Kathryn Doyle

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a new study from California, children with an autism spectrum disorder were more likely to have mothers who lived close to fields treated with certain pesticides during pregnancy.

Proximity to agricultural pesticides in pregnancy was also linked to other types of developmental delay among children.

“Ours is the third study to specifically link autism spectrum disorders to pesticide exposure, whereas more papers have demonstrated links with developmental delay,” said lead author Janie F. Shelton, from the University of California, Davis.

There needs to be more research before scientists can say that pesticides cause autism, she told Reuters Health in an email. But pesticides all affect signaling between cells in the nervous system, she added, so a direct link is plausible.

California is one of only a few states in the U.S. where agricultural pesticide use is rigorously reported and mapped. For the new study, the researchers used those maps to track exposures during pregnancy for the mothers of 970 children.

The children included 486 with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 168 with a developmental delay and 316 with typical development.

Developmental delay, in which children take extra time to reach communication, social or motor skills milestones, affects about four percent of U.S. kids, the authors write. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 68 children has an ASD, also marked by deficits in social interaction and language.

In the new study, about a third of mothers had lived within a mile of fields treated with pesticides, most commonly organophosphates.

Children of mothers exposed to organophosphates were 60 percent more likely to have an ASD than children of non-exposed mothers, the authors report in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Autism risk was also increased with exposure to so-called pyrethroid insecticides, as was the risk for developmental delay. Carbamate pesticides were linked to developmental delay but not ASDs.

For some pesticides, exposure seemed to be most important just before conception and in the third trimester, but for others it didn’t seem to matter when during pregnancy women were exposed.

Dr. Philip J. Landrigan speculated that the pesticides probably drifted from crops through the air, and that’s how pregnant women were exposed. The new study did not measure airborne pesticide levels, however.

Landrigan directs the Children's Environmental Health Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and was not involved in the new study.

“We already knew from animal studies as well as from epidemiologic studies of women and children that prenatal exposure (to pesticides) is associated with lower IQ,” Landrigan told Reuters Health. “This study builds on that, uses the population of a whole state, looks at multiple different pesticides and finds a pattern of wide association between pesticide exposure and developmental disability.”

What’s more, this study almost certainly underestimates the true strength of the association between pesticides and neurological problems, he said, since it did not precisely measure each individual woman’s exposure.

Pesticide registries like the one in California and another in New York are rare, but are critical to public health efforts in this area, Landrigan said. Concerned parents could advocate for registries like them in their own states, he added.

“One lesson or message for parents is to minimize or eliminate use of pesticides in their own homes,” Landrigan said.

In the months before and during pregnancy, it would make sense to avoid using pesticides in the home or on the lawn, he said.

For city-dwelling families, instead of spraying for cockroaches every month, integrated pest management is a better choice. That approach makes chemical pesticides the last resort - first steps are to seal up cracks and crevices in the home, clean up food residue and try relatively non-toxic options, like roach motels.

“If there’s one thing that parents can control it’s what comes into their home,” he said.

“It would be a great first step to stop using organophosphates and pyrethroids inside the home,” Shelton agreed.

Third test links pesticide exposure to autism

Proximity to fields treated with pesticides can contribute to a higher risk, says a regional study.
When exposure matters most

Sudan to release woman on death row for apostasy

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — A Sudanese woman on death row for apostasy had her sentence canceled and was ordered released by a Khartoum court on Monday, the country's official news agency reported.

SUNA said the Court of Cassation canceled the death sentence against 27-year-old Meriam Ibrahim after defense lawyers presented their case. The court ordered her release.

Ibrahim, whose father was Muslim but who was raised by her Christian mother, was convicted of apostasy for marrying a Christian. Sudan's penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims to other religions, a crime punishable by death.

Ibrahim married a Christian man from southern Sudan in a church ceremony in 2011. As in many Muslim nations, Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, though Muslim men can marry outside their faith.

Ibrahim has a son, 18-month-old Martin, who was living with her in jail, where she gave birth to a second child last month, local media reported. By law, children must follow their father's religion.

The sentence drew international condemnation, with Amnesty International calling it "abhorrent." The U.S. State Department said it was "deeply disturbed" by the sentence and called on the Sudanese government to respect religious freedoms.

Sudan introduced Islamic Shariah law in the early 1980s under the rule of autocrat Jaafar Nimeiri, a move that contributed to the resumption of an insurgency in the mostly animist and Christian south of Sudan. The south seceded in 2011 to become the world's newest nation, South Sudan.

Sudanese President Omar Bashir, an Islamist who seized power in a 1989 military coup, has said his country will implement Islam more strictly now that the non-Muslim south is gone.

A number of Sudanese have been convicted of apostasy in recent years, but they all escaped execution by recanting their new faith.

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FILE - This Oct. 2008 file photo shows Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, who was killed in a U.S. drone …

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday released a previously secret memo that provided legal justification for using drones to kill Americans suspected of terrorism overseas.

The memo concluded that the killing of an al-Qaida leader who had been born in the United States had legal justification. It said the authority to use lethal force abroad may apply in appropriate circumstances to a U.S. citizen who is part of the forces of an enemy organization. It said the killing was justified as long as it was carried out in accord with applicable laws of war.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan released the memo, portions of which are blacked out, after the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer who argued the case before the 2nd Circuit, said the memo's release "represents an overdue but nonetheless crucial step towards transparency. There are few questions more important than the question of when the government has the authority to kill its own citizens."

The memo pertained specifically to the September 2011 drone-strike killing in Yemen of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida leader who had been born in the United States.

Some legal scholars and human rights activists complained that it was illegal for the U.S. to kill American citizens away from the battlefield without a trial.

Lawyers for the Times and ACLU had said that the government's continued delays regarding the document were cheating the public of a fully informed and fair debate over the highly classified "targeted-killing" program.

Wochit

Syria Hands Over Remaining Chemical Weapons For Destruction

By Anthony Deutsch

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Syria on Monday handed over the remaining 100 tonnes of toxic material it had declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog, but the country cannot be declared free of the weapons of mass destruction, the organisation's chief said.

The chemicals, roughly 8 percent of a total 1,300 tonnes reported to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), had been held at a storage site which the government of President Bashar al-Assad previously said was inaccessible due to fighting with rebels.

The security situation in the area has now improved and the containers of chemicals were taken by truck to the Syrian port of Latakia and loaded onto a ship to be destroyed at sea on a specially equipped U.S. vessel, said OPCW chief Ahmet Uzumcu.

"A major landmark in this mission has been reached today. The last of the remaining chemicals identified for removal from Syria were loaded this afternoon aboard the Danish ship Ark Futura," Uzumcu told a news conference in The Hague.

The bulk of Syria's chemical stockpile had already been shipped out of Latakia, part of a multi-million-dollar operation involving some 30 countries.

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In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 13, 2014, a sticker reading "Toxic" on containers carr …

Syria agreed last September to destroy its entire chemical weapons programme under a deal negotiated with the United States and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

The agreement averted U.S. military strikes in response to the worst chemical weapons attack in decades, which Washington and its European allies blamed on Assad's regime. Assad blames rebels battling to oust him for the chemical attack.

It will be several months before Syria's entire chemical weapons programme can be destroyed, Uzumcu said.

INVESTIGATION

Uzumcu said an investigation into alleged use of chlorine in Syria's civil war and a review of the list of chemicals Syria has admitted possessing would continue. Western governments have raised questions over the list provided by the Assad government.

Chlorine Gas-like Chemicals Likely Used In Syrian …Play Video

"All declared chemical weapons have left Syria (but) clearly we cannot say as the secretariat of the OPCW that Syria doesn't possess any chemical weapons any more," he added.

"While a major chapter in our endeavours closes today, OPCW's work in Syria will continue. We hope to conclude soon the clarification of certain aspects of the Syrian declaration and commence the destruction of certain structures that were used as chemical weapons production facilities," said Uzumcu.

The process of neutralising the chemicals will take up to 60 days, he said, meaning Syria will miss a June 30 deadline to completely eliminate its chemical weapons programme.

Speaking in Cyprus on Monday, Sigrid Kaag, head of the joint U.N. and OPCW team of experts overseeing the removal of the chemical materials, said work would start within three months on a process to destroy 12 production sites and tunnels inside Syria linked to the chemical weapons programme.

Under the initial agreement, Syria had until next Monday to hand over its entire chemical stockpile and destroy all production and storage facilities in the country. Syria has missed several deadlines set out in the agreement.

It will take up to two months to neutralize and process the highly-toxic agents - including mustard gas, sarin and other highly-poisonous precursors for chemical warfare - with special equipment on board the U.S. cargo ship Cape Ray. Assad's government said it wants the U.N.-OPCW mission led by Kaag to end once all chemicals have been shipped.

But Western governments want the mission to continue to investigate numerous ambiguities in Syria's chemical weapons declaration and several alleged chlorine gas attacks, which they also blame on Assad's forces.

Last week OPCW investigators said preliminary information supported the view of Western governments that chlorine-like chemicals not declared to the watchdog have been used in Syria. "We have to maintain pressure on Syria to ensure that the chemical weapons programme is completely and irreversibly dismantled, including remaining production facilities," said the European Union in a statement welcoming Monday's announcement.

"The EU urges all parties to help revive the political track as there can be no military solution to this conflict."

The civil war in Syria, now in its fourth year, has killed 150,000 people, displaced half the country's 22 million population and forced 2.8 million to flee.

(Additional reporting by Michele Kambas in Nicosia; Editing by Gareth Jones)